Venice’s historical center, a fish-shaped island in the middle of the lagoon, is skirted by one of its deepest canals, the Canale della Giudecca, where cruise ships currently pass, docking in the island’s main port, the Marittima. In another incident in 2019, a cruise ship lost control and crashed into a dock, injuring at least four people. Either these huge ships are kept out of the lagoon altogether, or the industry adapts to our environment and sends smaller ships,” said Tommaso Cacciari, a spokesman for the No Big Ships Committee, a grass-roots organization that since 2012 has been fighting the presence of cruise ships in the lagoon. On paper, cruise ships are already banned from Venice, if not from the lagoon entirely. “We are kept in a limbo,” said Francesco Galietti, the national director for Italy of the Cruise Lines International Association.

Source: International New York Times July 08, 2021 09:00 UTC